Dusk is falling. In a space of sandy ground surrounded by trees, Fifty-some women, and a few men, stand in a wide circle, holding hands. In the centre of the circle is a fire.

One of the women turns to the woman on her left. She puts their joined hands on her own heart, and then on the other woman's.

“From my heart to your heart,” she says, “the circle is cast.” The words and the gesture travel, person-by-person, clockwise around the ring. Five of the people in the circle call in the elements of air, fire, water, earth and spirit. Finally, someone invokes Lilith.

It's a Friday night at Unicamp near Honeywood, Ont., and these women and men are about to take part in a powerful ritual.

Welcome to Wild Ginger Witch Camp.

Forget your Halloween and fairy-tale images of witches. The people gathered at Unicamp for the weekend are therapists, teachers, artists and students, nurses and midwives, computer programmers, parents and grandparents. Here there are no voodoo dolls, black magic spells, curses or consorting with the devil. The only bubbling cauldrons are in the kitchen, where Alta, who has cooked for Wild Ginger for years, works her own kind of sorcery, producing delicious meals for the seventy campers.

Whether they call it witchcraft, Wicca, paganism or the Craft, witches practise a nature-based religion that recognizes the earth itself as sacred. Witches celebrate the solstices and equinoxes, and the changing seasons, in a variety of ways. Many are also active in social causes and ecological concerns, such as the successful fight to stop the mega-quarry that threatened the aquifer near Honeywood. Occasionally, they also get together for events like Wild Ginger; church camp for witches.

There are many witch camps in the U.S. and Europe, but Wild Ginger is Ontario's only witch camp. As such, it draws people from London to Temagami, and even such exotic locales as Syracuse, Detroit and Wharncliffe. It's a family-friendly camp, too, welcoming children from babes in arms to adolescents. There are several children who have attended Wild Ginger every year of their lives. For some it may be the only place where they have playmates who are also “baby witches.”

How important Wild Ginger is in the lives of those who come can be gauged by how fast camp fills up. Once registration opens in April, the seventy spots are very quickly spoken for. Most campers are women, but there are always a few men and sometimes as many as a dozen children.

“My life is really stressful right now,” said one woman who goes by the magical name of Ravenstar. “Here I can just relax.”

Part of that stress is the misconceptions about witches and prejudice against them. While witchcraft has been accepted as a valid religion by the Government of Canada (entitling pagans to, for example, pastoral visits in prison), public opinion often lags behind legal acceptance. Some Wild Gingers (as the campers call themselves) are still “in the broom closet”, fearful of the reactions of family, friends, employers or co-workers to their religion. At camps like Wild Ginger they can be open about their faith. Still, concern about public response meant that the people I spoke to asked to be identified only by the names they used at Wild Ginger, their “magical names”, and that I not take any photographs unless the subjects consented.

The fact that anyone agreed to be photographed at all indicates the level of trust at the camp. Coverage of witches and witchcraft in mainstream media leans to the sensational. Who wants to read about a bunch of people doing something completely ordinary? Yet that is exactly what witches do – the ordinary activities of meals, study, worship and play in a setting devoted to their faith. It's only the details that are different.

Study groups are called “paths.” Friday and Saturday mornings campers could join paths in cosmic consciousness, anger and activism, voice and song in worship, music and sound, and a nature path for children of all ages.

There is also “unpath”, where people who don't feel called to take any of the other paths can do what calls to them. For a small group of us, this meant art on the dining hall deck, or meditation time in the woods. Alex wanted to practice her Tarot, and I was her willing guinea pig while I worked on a watercolour.

Meals are mainly vegetarian, with some vegan and gluten-free options. In the words of one of our cooks, “You guys eat like farmers!” Gallons of oatmeal, loaves of bread, dozens of hard-boiled eggs, tubs of yogurt and a huge basin of fruit salad appear at breakfast. Lunch and supper are also plentiful and delicious. Alta likes to serve a roast chicken dinner on Saturday night, with tofu chicken for the strict vegetarians. Nobody goes hungry, and the coffeepot is never empty. We take turns being the Goddess Caffeina, in charge of making a full pot.

The main focus of camp is the four religious services during the weekend; witches call them “rituals”. They don't take place in a dedicated building; instead, witches make sacred space for ritual by casting a circle wherever they are and invoking the elements — air, fire, water, earth and spirit. When the ritual is over, anything invited in is sent away and the energy structure of the circle is dismantled. At the next ritual, everything is done again.

“This is the only time I do ritual with a group,” said Jackal. “I don't have a coven at home. I love being with other witches.”

Ritual may include sacred drama – the acting out of myths or stories – singing, chanting, dance, meditation, prayer or drumming. Just as in any sacred service, the texts used to create the service are related back to human experience to give lessons, guidance or insight.

The biggest difference most people notice is that witches have many names for deity, and that many of those names are feminine. Few actually believe that Odin presides in Valhalla over a perpetual warriors' feast, or that Hera lives on Mount Olympus. Many modern witches regard the old god and goddess names as faces of deity, called “aspects,” and consider that deity is both male and female, and transcendent. Calling on a particular aspect is a way of focusing on that quality, or that story. This weekend, rituals and study are focused on the story of Lilith, who was exiled from Eden for disobedience.

Although children are included in most of the rituals, for Friday night they have their own children's circle. This ritual will bring home our own experiences of exile. It's considered too intense for young children.

All the people turn to face out of the circle. One by one, they name the things for which they have been shunned, belittled, ridiculed, excluded.

“Why don't you do something sensible with your life?”

“You can't marry him – he's not like us!”

“What do you mean you're a lesbian?”

“You're too fat.”

“You're crazy.”

“You're stupid.”

“You don't know how to raise your children.”

“You can't do anything right.”

After each hurtful phrase is spoken, Selchie, the priestess managing the ritual, says, “If this is your exile, step out of the circle. Look around. See who is out here with you. Now step back.”

As each person speaks her or his private hurt, the insult intended to make them feel wrong and isolated, others also step out of the circle to join them. Men, women, teenagers and parents and grandparents, all have been told the same things. Nobody is alone. Sometimes there are more people out of the circle than in it.

There is no hurry. Everyone who wants to speak can speak. Slowly we begin to realize that there are many others who were told the same hurtful things, and we wonder – if everyone else is out here, too, is it really exile? By the time we face back into the circle, we are changed. We're no longer alone, and we're no longer wrong.

We finish the ritual, dismiss the elements and take down the circle, then gather around the campfire to sing and drum. Eventually we put the fire out and wander back up the path through the woods to the dining hall for the after-ritual snack of popcorn, fruit, cookies and coffee and tea. This late in the evening it's Decaffeina who is the goddess of the coffeepot, because even witches need their sleep.

The bonding power of witch camp rivals super-glue. Kiki tells me, “You and I must have been separated at birth.” We'd never met before Thursday afternoon when the campers began arriving. Nine-year-old Little Dragon, who has been coming to camp with her mother, Butterfly, since she was a baby, has been drawing and painting with me in the afternoons. She asks if she can read and comment on my young-adult manuscript.

When Sunday afternoon arrives, all too soon, we have to pack up, clean up our cabins and the dining hall and head back out to the real world. We exchange hugs and emails, and requests to be friended on Facebook, and promises to come back next year. The organizers settle to their after-camp meeting on the dining hall deck to discuss the camp just finishing and set a date for their next meeting.

Next year is the 17th Wild Ginger Witch Camp. There's a theme to be decided, paths and rituals to be planned. The witches of Ontario — and New York and Michigan – will be there.